


Once Alive: Chapter One-Ella Sue

by AEHVeenman



Series: Once Alive [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Ella Sue, Gen, Original Character-centric, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Pre-Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AEHVeenman/pseuds/AEHVeenman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the year we show some love for the undead. After all, they were once people, too. Like you and I, the walking dead had hopes and dreams. They loved and lost...and LIVED.  </p><p>Once Alive is a collection of short stories attributed to those zombies who not only jolted our minds with their very existence but who also riled our being with shock, sorrow, humor, or fear.  </p><p>This miniseries submerges us in the time before the world went to hell, then raises us among key characters' transformation into the walking dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Alive: Chapter One-Ella Sue

**Author's Note:**

> There are seven (7) parts to Chapter One-Ella Sue. So far, I've gotten around to posting Part 1 & 2\. The rest is on its way! ;-)

 

# Ella Sue, Part 1

 

###  _"Are you warm?" Ella Sue nodded then waited for her mother to stop tightening the collar. "Alright, now you get to sleep."_

Ella Sue was cocooned in her pink bathrobe, which had once been soft and fluffy. Now, it had bald patches like a mange-ridden rabbit, and wasn't as warm as it used to be. She laid her head, and the rear seat's leather chilled her cheek, a crack hardened with age snagging a lock of her oily blond hair. She wiggled farther beneath the blanket to free it, the way she'd gotten used to doing in her new bed...the way she'd gotten used to a lot of things. 

###  _The car door opened and a blast of wind crawled over her. "Don't stay up, you hear?" Ella Sue nodded. "Love ya." The door slammed shut._

Mother was off to work again. Ella Sue bade her time...One, Two, Three, Four... Her head rose slowly, and she looked out the car window. 

Long-hauls and trailers filled the parking lot behind the nightclub. Lampposts shadowed the area with a golden hue, where the red, green, and blue neon beaming from the club's sign reminded Ella Sue of Christmases she'd seen on television. She could hear the subtle thumping of music she'd grown accustomed to over the past few months. Deep bass, slow rhythmic melodies, and sometimes fast-paced. It was the only lullaby she ever remembered getting in her young life, and the vision of Mother walking away in high heels was enough to signify home to her. She lowered again (that pesky rip in the seat caught her hair and she freed it) and she balled into a fetal position, gripping the corner of her blanket. 

###  _There was laughter, the wild kind that seemed free, shrills of delight which she'd never experienced herself.  She heard it in the back of her mind, not really through her ears. She was part of the fun without knowing what was going on. But the woman's chuckles sounded familiar._

Ella Sue peeled open her eyes, and the fog on her brain gradually dissipated. She now recalled her surroundings (trucks, cars, club, parking lot) but hadn't realized she'd fallen asleep. Her awakening not only brought to realization she wasn't part of the fun outside her door, but also aroused a volcanic grumbling in her stomach. Maybe that's why she'd entered her slumber so readily—she hadn't eaten since breakfast at Mitch's gas station.  

She sat up and peered out the window. The laughing woman she thought was Mother was in fact  _not_   her. This woman accompanied a man toward a dark colored pickup. They didn't go inside though. They were entangled upside the hood, kissing, touching. Ella Sue watched with a lesser degree of curiosity than that of waiting for Mother to come out with her man. Once Mother spent time with her fella, she'd come back home to the car.  

Sometimes Ella Sue would have to wait for Mother to entertain four or five before she'd hear the door open and shut, and the engine start.  After that, it was only a matter of a time before they'd park at the rear of Mitch's gas station, where the sunlight warmed them behind the convenience store. Ella Sue would climb over and onto the front seat, then curl up beside Mother as she nodded off. Only too soon Mitch would come out, knock on the glass, and wake them. Mother would give him money, then later she and Ella Sue could wash up inside and grab something to eat. 

###  _This was routine, normal, the way it was for the past few months since Mother left rehab. She'd promised Ella Sue it was only temporary, until she got back on her feet._

Ella Sue noticed the laughing woman also needed to get back on her feet. The man had her propped up on the front bumper, her legs wrapped around him, and the truck rocked back and forth. Ella Sue sighed with boredom and lowered again. 

# Ella Sue, Part 2

 

###  _The screams first came faintly, high-pitched, definitely female. Then there were more, a crowd of voices of varied tones, still somewhere in the back of her mind, not heard through the ears. She'd fallen asleep again, and this time it was harder to wake up. Fast footsteps thundered past her. Running, the occasional gunshots and sirens, angry voices and bottles breaking, all these were nothing new to her and not enough to raise her from slumber. The jarring bump against the car, however, was._

Ella Sue rose with a disorienting snap. A flash of her surroundings entered her vision but flooded the gates of her incoherent mind. 

###  _Through the windshield, she witnessed a woman lay on the hood while a man pressed her from behind. He grabbed her hair and yanked her downward, both their beings vanishing from Ella Sue's sight._

###  _From what she could see through her window fogged with her breath, people were wild tonight. They raced from the parking lot on wheels and foot, their screams indicative of a strange and new kind of fun, not like the laughing woman._  

Ella Sue rubbed the sticky web of sleep from her eyes, then glanced around for any sign of Mother among the hoard of men and women fleeing. They all passed her, left her alone with her pink, ratty bathrobe and backseat bed.  She blinked slowly, her eyelids and head weighing heavy under the colorful lights. She nestled beneath her blanket again, the music of her lullaby laddering in volume as the screams faded. 

###  _A different set of noises lingered outside her door. Lightly the growls came like the coyotes in Georgia when they cautioned encroachments. She balled up even tighter against the gnawing hunger pains in her stomach. The growls weren't outside, she convinced herself somewhere in a realm of dreams, it was her stomach. But the front door opening was real._

###  _"Ella Sue, baby, are you all right?" She remained tucked and nodded, opened her eyes long enough to see Mother panting hungrily for breath, her makeup smeared in wet stripes. "Dear God, what's happening," Mother shrieked and started the engine._

###  _She must've had another bad man again, Ella Sue surmised. It happened sometimes, and she wasn't to worry about it, Mother would say, even expect it every now and then. So when the vehicle whipped in several directions and sped onward, she didn't think anything of it. She let the sound of the tires along the road lure her into the deepest of sleep, where she drew comfort in knowing they'd be at Mitch's gas station soon._

 

It was her coughs which aroused her this time, and she sat up fully, rubbing her eyes and stretching her legs. She couldn't stop coughing. Something in the air choking her brought to realization that everything about being at Mitch's gas station was wrong. She was still in the backseat. The driver's side door was opened. Mitch hadn't knocked on the glass, but Mother wasn't sleep behind the steering wheel. She was gone, as if she'd vanished in the plumes of smoke filling the car.  

Ella Sue looked around frantically, opened her door and got out barefoot. She wasn't behind the convenience store. Through the mask of smoke, she saw she'd been sleeping beside a pump, a dinging coming from the dashboard. She called out to Mother but didn't get a reply. She needed to move out of the wind's path to see better, breathe better. 

  
Standing in a clearing of the lot, she spotted a truck and flipped car ablaze, atop an incline toward the highway. As the vehicles smoldered, a man and woman wrestled much in the way the couple on the hood of the car had last night at the club.  The woman screamed a terrifying shriek while the man grabbed at her, and down they went.  Ella Sue made a visor with her hands and shielded her eyes from the sunlight. Silhouettes of the man and woman created a disturbing kind of fun; at the end of the bout, the man stood erect, holding only the woman's head. 

  
Ella Sue ran, crying for her mother, ran as fast as her naked feet could take her across the hard concrete. Everywhere she turned there were cars parked sideways, along the grass, across two spaces, up against the wall of the store. A roaming man or woman, here and there, growling like her tummy, but no Mother. If she couldn't find her, she'd search for the next best thing. 


End file.
